President Lula da Silva continues his insightful support for free software. Translation by NXS: “In the middle of a world dominated by competitiveness […] the free software community demonstrates that there is still space for the democratization of knowledge.” Lula made the remarks at CONSEGI 2009.

Lula spoke about the broader goals of free software to break down barriers in an increasingly information-based society. These goals are being pursued by using both the programs and values of free software. He continued: “We are discussing access to development. Our meeting is important for us to strengthen the necessary collaboration to become a factor in social inclusion. I feared that the social relationship would remain prejudiced but what I saw was children sitting around, talking amongst themselves, working on the computer, researching and teaching each other. A total interaction.”

How can these values be imported into the United States?

President Lula of Brazil is about to open the 2nd Annual CONSEGI Conference in Brazil — the International Free Software and Electronic Government Conference. For more information about CONSEGI, see NorthxSouth’s archives (NXS attended the historic first conference).

The Public Software is an initiative from Brazil’s government to provide free software as a public service to the society. It is a portal for communities of free softwares developed by the government and the private sector. All of the solutions are used in production sites inside of the major public institutions of Brazil and in the private sector.

In February 2009, at Havana, Cuba, was launched the project to internationalize the Free Software Portal, an initiative to help other countries to implement free software in their government adopting the Brazilian model. Cuba was the first one to join it, and they will choose one of the free softwares in the portal to be translated to Spanish and used in different sectors of the Cuban society.

After that other governments has shown desire to join the project such like Paraguay, Trinidad e Tobago, Ecuador, Bolivia and Colombia. Now Brazil started to visit countries around Latin America to present the Public Software Portal. Uruguay was the first one to be visited, the goal with these meetings is to present the experience of the Public Software in Brazil.

The internationalization process is an attempt to share the solutions with other countries and also to involve them on the development of those free softwares communities. The process will involve the translation of the solutions as well as the creation of a special portal translated to other languages which will host communities of free softwares from other countries.

The First Public Software Meeting will happen this year on Octuber during the Latinoware Conference at Foz do Iguaçu, Paraná. It will be historic and will greatly enhance the process of adoption of free software by Latin America governments.

The president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, confirmed that he will participate at the open ceremony of CONSEGI (Free Software and Electronic Government International Conference), which will take place at Brasília, August 26 to 28. This will be the second free software event in Brazil that the president participates. In June, Lula visit the International Free Software Forum (FISL) in Porto Alegre, where he met with John “Maddog” Hall, Richard Stallman and other members of the free software community..

It was at Lula’s first mandate (2003) that the use of free software for development of solutions to e-Gov (Electronic Government) became an orientation of the Federal Government. Lula also created the Technical Committee of Implementation of Free Software - CISL, responsible for promoting awareness, training and dissemination of free software in the Public Administration. CISL has already the authorization of Lula to build a public police for free software in Brazil, to generate a change of direction for IT in the country by promoting cooperative work, share of knowledge and skills and therefore help create a more inclusive information society and the development of the country.

During his speech at FISL10, the Brazillian president stated that there is no greater freedom then to ensure the individual freedom and emphasized the importance of providing conditions in which “people can raise their creativity and their intelligence, especially in a new country like Brazil”, land of great creative people. “Finally we have found ourselves. Finally this country is having a taste of freedom of information”.

North by South was at the first edition of CONSEGI last year and we covered the whole event, you can find a summary of articles about it here. It was a very inspiring conference and we are happy to see this second edition coming out. The event is free and open to the public, anyone can go and participate in the panels to be informed about the progress of free software adoption in the Latin American governments.